


Dream Lover, so I don't have to dream alone

by GhostlyVoid



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Dream Sex, Dreamsharing, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Sam is dreaming a lot, Sharing a Bed, case fic turned "they didn't know they were sharing dreams" fic, mentions of past child abuse (not Sam or Dean)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 14:50:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19832473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostlyVoid/pseuds/GhostlyVoid
Summary: For Sam, the only weird thing that can happen in his nightmares is when, for once, the dream horror isn't his past or fears haunting him. It was quite a normal people’s nightmare actually, only that the same person in his dream has also visited Dean in his sleep.





	Dream Lover, so I don't have to dream alone

Sam woke with a racing heart, which wasn’t unusual for him. The dream — nightmare, really — was still fresh on his mind. Not his usually kind of night horror, hell and Lucifer and whatever current crisis they were going through. No, this one had been different.

It took him another moment to notice what had woken him up. Dean was making noises in the other bed. Screams, held back by the fact that he was asleep. He was in distress, his face scrunched up, and there was no doubt that he was having a nightmare as well.

Sam sat up, he had pushed the blanket away in his sleep, and stepped to Dean’s bed. Up close he could see the droplets of sweat glistering on his forehead. His hand twitched, wanting to tenderly brush away the strands of hair stuck to the wet skin and comb through Dean’s hair. Instead, he shook him lightly. Dean started as he opened his eyes, panicking until he realized there was no threat.

Sam turned away and checked the time while Dean found his bearings — it was 3:03 AM, too soon to justify starting the day.

Dean released a heavy breath and said, “I had a nightmare.”

“Yeah,” said Sam. He didn’t say Dean had been screaming. Dean knew already from the fact that Sam had woken him up. And Sam knew they were not going to talk about it, like always. He went back to his bed and pulled up the covers, lying on his back. His shirt was clinging to him from his own cooling sweat.

“Hey, Sam?”

Sam hummed.

“You wanna know what I dreamed about?”

Sam turned his head and hesitated. “You want to talk about it?”

Dean was lying on his side, facing him. The only window in the room was to Dean’s back, so all Sam could make out was his silhouette. And yet, Dean seemed to be serious.

“It’s not what you think. The dream was just... so _weird_.”

“Weird how? You mean like… a vision?”

“No, nothing like that. Normal weird. Not like the nightmares I usually have.” He cleared his throat and continued talking in a whisper. “I was in the backyard of this house, and I was sitting on a swing. You know, the ones that are self made, hanging from a tree?”

Sam propped his head up and nodded.

“It was like I was plunged into a horror movie, everything was gloomy and I was feeling uneasy for some reason.” Dean ran a hand over his face. “There was this woman. She was standing at the backdoor of the house, looking at me. She didn’t move at first, and I was swinging on that swing, back and forth, until I suddenly stopped. Then she came toward me, but like they do in the movies, she was skipping frames. Not even walking, only zapping closer and closer, staring at me the whole time. The closer she came the more panic I was in.”

Sam felt the pulse in his throat. An impending feeling of dread built in his stomach. “What did she look like?” he whispered. Now, if Dean said…

“She was dressed in black, blonde hair, and she looked like she had been playing in mud or something. Super dirty, but not in the sexy way.”

A cold shiver went through him, he had stopped breathing. What the fuck.

“Anyway, that’s when I was _really_ freaking out. I don’t even know why, we do all this stuff that’s ten times scarier than this, but I was so fucking afraid in that moment, man. Dreams, I guess, huh? Kinda funny to have a normal people nightmare every once in a while.”

Sam sat up, perched on the edge of the bed.

“Are you okay?” Dean slowly rose into a sitting position, leaning against the headboard.

Sam clasped his hands and leaned forward, arms resting on his knees. “I’m gonna tell you what _I_ dreamed, okay?”

The way Dean was positioned now let Sam see his face in the low light of the street lamps outside. He was frowning, looking at him in boding apprehension.

“So, I’m at this birthday party and it’s coming to an end, because one after the other the kids are being picked up — and I think I’m a kid too, actually. And the more people go the more scared I become. Eventually, I’m the last person there, except for my mother.”

“Like, our mother?”

“No, some random woman, but I don’t really see her face. In the dream she is my mother, and it’s just this dream knowledge. And then I’m in my room, the door’s open and I’m looking into this unnaturally long hallway. And at the other end is the mother, only that she’s slowly morphing into a different woman.”

Sam paused and glanced at Dean. He waited for him to get it. Dean was biting his lip and eventually he asked, “The same woman?”

Sam gave a nod and continued. “She’s exactly as you’ve described her. Then she comes closer. Not skipping frames, but like she was gliding or floating, and she was getting faster and faster. I tried to close the door but couldn't, and I couldn’t run either. And just before she reached me your screaming woke me up.”

Dean was quiet. After a while he said, “Shit.”

“Yeah, shit,” said Sam.

  


* * *

  


“Do you have any leads yet on what this might be?” Dean asked as he came in with breakfast for them some hours later.

“Well,” said Sam. He closed the laptop and put it aside to free the table. “There’s the mare, or Mara, who in some beliefs takes the form of a woman and tortures men in their dreams, dragging the life out of them. There’s other stuff about her that doesn’t really fit, though I can’t really exclude her for sure. Could also potentially be a ghost, psychic, or witch.”

“Great, narrows it down loads,” Dean muttered. He had bought four coffees. They wouldn’t be sleeping for a while. Or at least until they thought it was safe to do so again.

“You think she could kill us?”

“I don't know. Possibly. The mare could kill us for sure, a ghost might be able to as well. I’d say it’s unlikely with a psychic, and very likely if it’s a witch.” Sam took out his fruit salad and peeled off the plastic cover.

“Maybe we saw a movie poster for a horror film yesterday and then both dreamed about it” Dean suggested — again — before biting into his breakfast sandwich.

Sam shrugged. They’ve talked about that possibility before and he didn’t have anything new to say to that. They was no such thing as coincidences in their world. Not that kind of coincidence anyway.

“Did you find anything that we could use to protect ourselves?”

“No, Dean, you were only gone for 30 minutes.”

“Sorry, sorry. So let’s start with looking for a dead young woman?” He drowned half his coffee in one go.

“Yeah, we need to check out the local deaths,” said Sam. “A suicide or murder victim that looks like her would be best case scenario.”

“Yeah, I really don’t want to deal with a witch, man,” said Dean and pushed a sandwich to him. “Eat, or I’m gonna have to feed you.”

“I can feed myself, thanks, jerk.”

“Prove it, bitch. You’d starve without me.”

They grinned at each other.

  


* * *

  


Three hours later they weren’t any closer to cracking the case. Brushing it off to a coincidence sounded very appealing suddenly, if stupid. There were no deaths looking like the woman, which would be good since they’re able to exclude a ghost. Only that it had taken them forever to find everything, and time wasn’t something they had a lot of, considering they could only stay up for so long until sleep would claim them forcefully.

“Hey, do we still have some of the African Dream Root?” asked Sam.

“Maybe in the bunker, but I don't think so.”

Sam groaned in defeat and changed the tab. He had too many freaking tabs open and they still hadn’t found much that would aid them in protecting themselves while they slept. The African Dream Root would have at least put them together in one dream and given them the awareness that they were dreaming.

“Can't we just use something else?” asked Dean eventually. “There must be some spell or something that does the same thing, right?”

Sam’s head shot up. There was a whole shelf in the bunker full of books about dream creatures and dreams in general (not the ‘ _You saw a dog in your dream, what does that mean?_ ’ kind but the real deal). He had leafed through them a while ago and there was a high chance there was something in those books they could use. He should have thought of that sooner, damn it.

“We need to go back to bunker,” he said.

“Okay,” agreed Dean. “But we should first talk to the locals, maybe she’s also visiting other people. And maybe they know something the death records didn’t. If we’re lucky we can burn a body before we need to think about whether we’re getting killed if we go to sleep or not.”

“When do we ever get lucky?” said Sam, but Dean was right. Just — chances were high that would lead to nothing. Protection should be their first priority. And they couldn’t do both today, Lebanon was a four hour drive away. “How about I go read some books in the bunker and you stay here to do all that?”

Dean squinted at him. “Not sure which one of us is getting the short end of the stick here, but fine.”

“Alright then. I’m taking the Impala obviously.” Dean scowled but threw him the keys. Sam put them in his jacket. “And Dean? Don’t fall asleep.”

“Wouldn't dream of it,” he said. “Heh.”

  


* * *

  


Back with a book so old the cover was breaking apart and all that was left of the title were a few random letters, Sam parked the Impala in front of the diner they were meeting at. It was late, and there were only two other groups of people eating inside.

“Did you find anything?” was Sam’s greeting as he took a seat in the booth. He hoped Dean did, even if that meant Sam had made the drive and research for nothing.

“Hi to you too. My day was great, except that walking everywhere _sucks_. I hope you were treating my Baby well.”

Sam made a face at him and rolled his eyes.

“Not directly,” Dean answered his question. “There are no murders, suicides, accidents or even natural deaths that look like our little horror girl and nobody I talked to had any strange dreams.”

The waitress was coming toward them so Sam snagged Dean’s menu and threw a quick glance into the salad section. Chicken salad in was.

“Maybe it’s not a local thing and she’s haunting us specifically, a witch could probably reach us from wherever,” Sam said after the waitress had left.

“No, I don’t think so. Because get this, there is this one house at the edge of the neighborhood and its backyard looks exactly like in my dream, swing and all.”

Sam frowned. “You just randomly thought ‘Hey, I'm gonna check that house’s yard’ or did you break into every single one in the neighborhood?”

Dean laughed and leaned back, all confident in his posture and smile and a glint in his eyes that told Sam he knew something he hadn’t shared yet. “Nope, it was the only blue one in the street and that caught my eye. It was blue in my dream too.”

“Okay, that's... interesting,” said Sam. “Did you see who lives there?”

“Nobody was home when I knocked, and I didn’t break in. But I do know who lives there,” said Dean. Sam raised a questioning eyebrow. Dean grinned self-assured. “The house is not the only thing I’ve found.”

“I figured. What else?” Sam prompted.

Dean glanced over his shoulder, then brought up a folder, opening and turning it for Sam to see.

“That looks like…”

“Yep.”

Inside was a missing person file with an attached photo of a young blonde woman, exactly as they had seen her in their dreams.

“Her name is Daisy Olivier and she’s been missing since April 21st. Her parents live in the blue house.”

“April? That’s more than a month she’s been missing.”

“Yeah, likely dead,” Dean said with a smug face. He’d found them a ghost.

Sam wasn’t going to pull out the fragile book in a diner, and in fact, it was still in the car, but when they both had plates of food before them he started explaining what he had discovered, “I found this incantation, and it’s going to let us share dreams. Only problem is, it doesn’t guarantee lucidity like the dream root does.”

“That means?”

“It means we might not know we're dreaming. But maybe being together would be enough to act like hunters and not like little children when she comes running.”

Dean grimaced but gave a nod. “What do we need?”

“Just the spell. It creates somewhat of a temporary soul bond, allowing the souls to touch and link in dreams. It’s a fragile connection so the subjects, uh, _people_ have to be touching while they sleep.”

“And that’s safe?” Dean eyed him suspiciously.

“It’s not harmful, and since it only works with touch and during sleep when the subconscious is most open, it won’t have lasting effects as far as I can tell.”

“Alright,” said Dean during a mouthful of grilled ham and lifted a shoulder in half a shrug. “But what if we don’t notice we’re dreaming?”

“We have to,” said Sam intently. The book was written by the Men of Letters, and they had done experiments on this, which Sam only had time to skim through. “The test subjects had a lucid dream about 50% of the time — on average. We just have to hope and really really want it.”

Dean shrugged again and flipped a crumpled napkin at him. “50% aren’t horrible odds. We’ve worked with less before.”

“Yeah…” Sam sighed. He should still read up on lucid dreaming.

  


* * *

  


“We need to speak it at the same time. You should read through it before we do it, Dean.”

“I know how to read latin,” Dean said, forcefully taking off his socks.

“I’m no saying you don’t. Just—“ Sam gingerly placed the book down at the table and opened the marked page. Not only was it latin, it was also _handwritten_. “You need to be able to read it smoothly. I’ll read through it too, okay?”

“Whatever,” said Dean. He came over in sweatpant and shirt, same as Sam, and glared at him. “Let’s do this.”

“Fine,” he muttered. “On three — one, two, three.”

They started reading in sync, and Sam actually though they were going to make it till the end when Dean stumbled over a word and broke their flow.

Sam didn’t gloat and only threw him a look. Dean’s face made him want to laugh very badly but he held it back. Making Dean angry wouldn’t help the cause.

“Shut up,” said Dean anyway. “This is worse than chicken scratch. Okay, again. One, two, three.”

They spoke the incantation again, this time finishing it without incident. Dean raised his head with an expression that dared Sam to say something. Sam broke into a smile and Dean stalked off, getting into bed — his bed, which apparently was the one they were going to share — and lied down on his back, arms crossed over his chest.

“You coming or what?” he asked.

Sam turned off the lights and joined him.

It was awkward, to say the least. They hadn’t slept like this since way before Stanford. Sam was on his side, an arm around Dean’s torso — touching as per book’s request — but otherwise maintaining distance. He didn’t know what to do with his other arm, which laid uncomfortably between them. His knuckles touched Dean so he quickly brought his hand back in and felt stupid for it. They _had_ to touch.

Dean cleared his throat. Sam saw his adam’s apple bop as he swallowed. “This is stupid,” he said without any heat behind it. 

“You’re stupid…” muttered Sam. His hands were getting sweaty so he kept them in loose fists. It would be a while until they could fall asleep like that. And for all they knew, she might not even visit them again tonight. Or try to kill them.

This wasn’t what he remembered sharing a bed with Dean was like. But then again, back then he hadn’t exactly been attracted to his brother.

After another minute or two, Dean sighed and squirmed his arm underneath Sam’s head. Sam’s heart made a happy jump. He rolled into Dean and placed his head on his shoulder. This was more like it. Dean’s arm came around his back and hugged him closer. Dean released a controlled breath and finally relaxed his muscles.

Sam hadn’t felt like a little brother for a while now. Not like this. And if he was being honest… He had kind of missed it. Not that he didn’t like being equals with Dean, but this — this was nice. There was a sense of safety related to being in Dean’s arms. Being held by his big brother.

Maybe this could become a comfort they could give again freely. Embracing each other, not only Dean being the protective big brother, but both giving and receiving the affection attached to physically holding one another.

But maybe this was something only Sam wished for.

He pressed his face into Dean’s shoulder and bit away the lump in his throat. He should try and enjoy this while he had it.

  


* * *

  


He was in a bedroom lined with posters of people Sam didn’t recognize. Stars of some sort. He liked them and he loved what they did. Judging by the clothing lying on the floor this was a teenage girl’s room. It was his room.

Everything was strangely distorted and greyed out, but that was normal. He left through the open door, went through a hallway — he was walking so slowly and carefully, but that was normal too — until he entered the living room. Dean was sitting on the sofa, watching TV. Then, Sam realized he was in a dream and suddenly everything seemed a tad more real.

The front door opened and a sharp jolt of fear went through Sam. Dean flinched but didn’t avert his eyes from the TV.

A woman whose appearance Sam’s mind couldn’t grasp walked up behind Dean, and despite being aware of what was happening it took Sam a second longer to react. _The ghost_ , flew through his head, and, _Dean_.

It was like Dean had heard his thought, because in that moment he turned around and froze at her sight. Sam felt the cold fear as if it was his own. Momentarily forgotten, the awareness of the dream kicked back in, and he frantically looked for something made out of iron. He wished for a gun but nothing happened.

The woman — the ghost, _Daisy_ , now looking like herself again — reached out and grabbed Dean’s neck. Then, a shotgun in Sam’s hands. The gun was heavy, the metal cold and sturdy in his palms, and down to the smallest detail like a real one.

“ _Help me_ ,” said someone, voice distorted, and Sam shot. She vanished into thin smoke.

Sam let out a sigh, letting the gun fade into nothing — too hard for him to keep concentrating on it — and leapt toward Dean. Just before he reached him, Dean disappeared as well.

Sam turned on the spot, confused, and saw nobody, no Dean, no ghost. His heart was pumping quickly and the room kept getting bigger and eerier and colder and

Someone shook him and he knew he was back in bed with Dean before he even opened his eyes. The living room was still before him, becoming darker behind his closed eyelids, until he was fully back in his body and the pictures were gone for good, leaving only the memory and their feeling behind.

They were lying the way they had fallen asleep, Sam halfway on Dean, but somewhere between before and now Sam had slung his leg over Dean. The blanket was keeping in a welcome warmth, their shared body heat.

He released a heavy breath against Dean’s neck.

“You awake?” whispered Dean.

“Yeah,” said Sam groggily. He cleared his throat. His pulse was still racing. “What time is it?”

“About 3 AM again,” said Dean. So they’ve been asleep for about four hours.

“Were you lucid?” asked Sam and scooted up a bit so he could see Dean’s face.

They were so close he could taste his breath as Dean said, “No.”

“Did you say ‘help me’ just before I shot her? Or was that her?”

Dean furrowed his brows. “I don’t remember.”

Sam hummed and closed — rested — his eyes. “Maybe she’s not dead after all?” he asked, ended in a yawn. The bad feelings of the dream were dissipating quietly and rapidly as he laid in Dean’s arms.

He smiled lazily as Dean yawned as well. “Dunno. You think she said that?”

“Mh… Maybe. Maybe she’s being held captive somewhere, in a vampire nest or something. Could be psychic and looking for help.”

“Strange way to ask people for help if you ask me…”

“We should—” Sam broke up in another yawn. He pressed his face into the crook of Dean’s neck and breathed in deep. “We should talk about this in the morning.”

“Yeah.” Dean ran his hand across Sam’s back. Sam sighed softly and fell gladly back into sleep.

  


* * *

  


“We need to talk with her family and search through her room if we can,” said Sam as they were getting ready in the morning.

Dean nodded. “Yeah, definitely.”

They didn’t talk about the fact that they had continued sleeping in the same bed after the encounter with Daisy. They didn’t dream about her again after that — Sam presumed it might be a three o’clock thing, but he couldn’t be sure. All in all, he was glad they had done the spell, even though it still wasn’t clear whether she could have actually hurt them or not.

They dressed up, took out their current FBI aliases and drove the short trip to the blue house at the edge of the forest.

“Good Morning,” greeted Dean. “We’re Agents White and Pinkman from the FBI. We were wondering if we could ask you a few questions about your missing daughter?”

“Daisy?” Mrs. Olivier eyes comically widened in surprise. “But it’s been _weeks_.”

“We know, but now it’s not the police but the FBI investigating,” said Sam with a small smile. He pointed inside. “May we come in?”

“Well, I suppose,” Mrs Olivier said and let them through. “But I have already told the police everything I know. And there’s not much to say, really, she just didn’t come home one day and that’s it.”

She sat down in the recliner, and Sam and Dean took a seat on the sofa without being asked. It’s weird how much the room looked like the dream version. Dean was slightly uncomfortable about that fact, his shoulders just a tad stiffer than normal. Mrs. Olivier wouldn’t notice, but Sam did.

Sam gave Mrs. Olivier a smile and laid on thick with his empathetic face. “We’re sorry to hear that, Mrs. Olivier. May we ask how your relationship to your daughter was?”

She sighed dramatically and pursed her lips. “Normal. I was her mother. She was in her late teens. What more is there to say?”

“And to her father?”

“Well, he’s not often here, since he’s away for business a lot. So a little bit distant, I suppose.” She tapped her long nails on the arm of the seat. “Is this going anywhere? I don’t think she has run off, she didn’t even take anything. I’m sure she’d dead in a ditch somewhere, you people are wasting your time.”

Sam and Dean didn’t answer immediately. They shared a glance. It was Dean who spoke first. “Ma’am. I assure you we’re doing our best to find her. You shouldn’t be thinking so negatively, we—”

“The police said that the chances of finding her alive after the first 72 hours are—”

“We know, I’m sorry if we’re upsetting you,” said Sam. “We’re not trying to open any wounds, we just want to find your daughter. Could we maybe take a look into her room?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “I suppose. It’s at the end of the hallway.”

“Thank you.”

The hallway, unsurprisingly, wasn’t as long as Sam had experienced in the dream. The room on the other hand was almost identical, posters and clothes and all the right colors, but brighter in the morning light that was shining through the open curtains.

Dean picked up a framed photo from the desk and turned it for Sam to see. Sam stepped closer and, yeah, that was her. A bit younger, not a recent photo.

Dean snuck a glance through the door behind Sam and leaned forward to whisper, “She sure seems to have gotten over her disappearance quickly.”

“Yeah,” agreed Sam. “I had a thought later this morning that Daisy might want help in giving her parents closure, you know, if she’s dead. But the mother definitely _supposes_ so already.”

“You think she has something to do with this?”

“I don’t know. If she’s a ghost I’m wondering what’s keeping her here. It doesn’t look like it’s wanting closure with the mom, that’s for sure.”

Dean put the picture back and opened a drawer. “What if we tried to summon her?”

“To ask her? Doesn’t seem like a good idea to call a potentially angry ghost to us.”

Dead shrugged. “Yeah… She might tell us where her body is though...” He rummaged in the drawer and pulled out a bracelet. It had been worn a lot, the string was barely holding together. “Personal belonging,” he said.

Sam closed the door. Mrs. Olivier hadn’t followed them but better safe than sorry. He took out the EMP meter. “Nothing.”

Dean hummed. “That saves us the question of whether she felt any cold spots... Hey, why do you think she doesn’t make contact with her parents in _their_ dreams?”

Sam ran a hand through his hair in frustration. That’s been bothering him for a bit now — why them? “I don’t know. We’re more susceptible to this stuff maybe? No idea.” After a thoughtful pause, he added, “Okay, I think that summoning idea isn’t so bad after all. We have too many unanswered questions and don’t even know where to start looking for her.”

Dean grinned at him and walked past him out of the room.

  


* * *

  


They set up the candles, a pentagram, and a bowl with blood. Dean placed the stolen bracelet in the middle of the pentagram, and then stood to the side with a shotgun in case she turned hostile. Sam chanted the incantations and summoned the spirit of Daisy Olivier. The last proof they were dealing with a ghost.

The air turned icy cold a split second before Daisy appeared exactly as they had dreamed of her — dressed all in black and dirty like she’s spent the last few weeks outside. She likely has.

Daisy stared at them and didn’t move. Sam cleared his throat. “Daisy Olivier?”

“Are you going to help me?” she asked in a shivering voice and took a step toward Sam. In the corner of Sam’s eye Dean readied the shotgun.

“Yes,” said Sam to placate her, not quite knowing what she wanted help with. “Can you tell us what happened to you?”

Her face seemed so much younger suddenly as she tilted her head up to pout at Sam. “It was my mother,” she said. “She killed me and hid my body in the forest.”

It wasn’t really too much of a surprise.

“In the forest? Can you show us where?”

The curtains swayed in a ghostly breeze, and the windows appeared to vibrate. Goosebumps shot up his arms. Something behind Sam fell to the floor and shattered.

“Sam,” said Dean, Sam didn’t advert his eyes from Daisy.

“ _What do you want with my body?_ ”

Sam raised his hand, palms toward her. “We’re just—“

“I know what you do, I’ve seen it in your dreams.” She faced Dean and glared at the shotgun. Dean held it tighter but she didn’t react, turned back to Sam. “I’ll tell you where my body is, but you’ve got to do something for me. Then you can burn it.”

“What do you need us to do?” asked Sam, resisting the urge to frown in suspicion.

“Bring my body to my mother.”

“But you said she was the one who killed you?”

Daisy stared at him with tears in her eyes. “Since I was a kid, everytime we were alone she beat me and abused me. I was so terrified of her, constantly having nightmares. I was always starting to panic when guests were leaving or when she would come home. But I’m not scared anymore. I need to kill her. Will you help me?” Her voice became a pitiful whisper.

Sam threw a glance at Dean. He was at a loss of words.

“We’ll see what we can do, alright?” Dean said. “So where exactly is your body?”

She squinted at him and remained silent.

“We can’t help you if we don’t know where your body’s at?” tried Sam. “You have to trust us.”

She spun around and Sam was afraid he had angered her. She finally said, “Go to the tree in the yard and go north from there. You’ll have to walk at least ten minutes until you come to a clearing. We used to have picnics there when my dad was home. To the east is a stream and next to that she buried my body.”

  


* * *

  


Half an hour later they snuck into the yard and made their way into the forest. Their job was to _prevent_ ghosts from killing people, not to enable them, but that didn’t stop them from arguing about whether they should make an exception this once. Or rather, how to possibly bring Mrs. Olivier behind bars. Sometimes it was hard playing all judge, jury and executioner.

They arrived at the clearing and found the stream. There was no obvious patch of dirt that seemed like it had been dug up recently. But then again, it had been weeks.

Dean stabbed the shovel randomly into the ground, doing the same a few feet to the side, hoping to find the spot where the dirt would be less dense. Sam watched him do it and secretly wished for Daisy to appear to show them the spot.

A sharp cry came from the direction they had come from. “What do you think you’re _doing?_ ” Mrs. Olivier appeared behind them in a quick jog. She was out of breath. “This is _private_ property!”

“Is it now?” asked Dean. He cocked his head and dropped the shovel over his shoulder.

“You can’t— You need a search warrant. _Yes_ , exactly! You can’t just go here and dig up the ground. Or— or whatever you’re planning on doing. There’s nothing to be dug up here.” Her face was an angry shade of red and her eyes constantly darted to the side, no doubt where they would find her daughter’s body.

Dean had noticed too and he threw her a tight smile. “We’re the FBI, ma’am. And this sounds an awful lot like you’re hiding something.”

“Mrs. Olivier, look,” tried Sam before she started screeching at them again. “We know you—”

“You know _nothing_. I did _nothing_. You have no right to be here. This is my own daughter we’re talking about after all. I didn’t, I didn’t _kill_ her. And you need to _go!_ ” Sam’s ears were ringing from the sharp tone she had reached on the last word.

She came toward Sam and he raised his shotgun. She stopped in her tracks at once. Sam was about to attempt some more reasoning, when he notices she was staring at a place over his shoulder. Dean inhaled sharply.

Sam turned around and there was Daisy, standing a few feet behind him to the side, glaring at her mother.

“No,” came a soft whimper from Mrs. Olivier.

Sam fired the salt gun at Daisy. Dean immediately went to the place she had been standing on and dug in, biceps bulging under the flannel. “Her body is right there, it’s only like a half foot deep.”

Sam aimed the gun at Mrs. Olivier. Not that he planned to shoot, but the situation wasn’t what they had planned for anymore. They had been expecting an angry ghost that needed to be distracted while they burned a body, and not the person the ghost wanted to kill in spitting distance.

“Mrs. Olivier?” said Sam. “You might want to consider going back or I assure you, your daughter will try to kill you.”

“My daughter is dead,” she said, voice flat like she didn’t believe it.

Daisy chose that moment to appear behind her. She grabbed her by the neck and Mrs. Olivier screamed in the most piercing tone. Sam shot on instinct. He barely missed Mrs. Olivier and caught Daisy.

“Mrs. Olivier,” he said again. She was still screaming. He approached as she was trying to run away. She flinched at the hand on her shoulder and looked up at him, eyes tearing up and breathing going rapid. “Listen to me. You will admit to what you did or Daisy won’t rest until she has killed you.”

Dean stepped forward and glared at her. “Believe me if I tell you this: She will find you everywhere you go, she will haunt you in your dreams, she will try to kill you every second of the rest of your life, and when she does it won’t be a quick death. Prison is nothing in comparison to what ghosts can do to you.”

Sam almost involuntarily cracked a smile.

Mrs. Olivier was shaking under his hand. “Okay,” she whispered. “I did it, I k— killed her. But it was an accident, I _swear_.”

“Accident or not, you abused her and you will own up to it,” said Dean. He took her arm her steered her toward the house. “I’ll take her to the police. You have the lighter?”

Sam nodded and caught the shovel Dean threw him. The body was already dug up enough to burn, he could smell it. He watched them go. Someone spoke up behind him.

“You were going to just burn me.”

Sam turned to Daisy, who standing over her body, and said, “Well, yeah. Are you going to let me?”

“You don’t need to do that anymore. I’ll move on,” she said. He raised his eyebrows. “You want the police to find me burned?”

“You need to understand I have to be sure. If you don’t, I’ll do it anyway, and it won’t be pleasant for you.”

They stared each other down for a few moments. Sam mentally got ready to fire at a moment’s notice. Then Daisy spoke up.

“One more thing.”

Sam hesitated. “What?”

“Your mind and that of your brother are very fucked up places.”

He laughed bitterly.

  


* * *

  


They stayed another night at the motel, since there was no risk of the police showing up to arrest them for digging up a grave in the cemetery or shooting some neighborhood werewolf. They had dinner, maxing out their last credit card, and then went back to their room because, well, there wasn’t any money left for a celebratory whiskey.

It didn’t worry them. They always got by, and now that they had a base at the bunker they always kept a little back up stash there, always enough to hustle pool at a bar they weren’t locals at or buy food while they waited for their credit card applications to come through. But they would always make it somehow. It was just a part of being hunters.

Nightmares, of course, were part of the job too. There were periods were they were worse, sometimes so bad Sam kept pulling one all-nighter after the other and downing coffee like air. But other times they weren’t as persistent. The last weeks had been on the easier side as far as nightmares went. Because sometimes — like today — Sam dreamed of Dean.

He dreamed of pushing him down on a bed, both of them already naked, and sliding their burning skin against each other, pleasure encompassing them and building and building.

He dreamed of getting Dean all worked up, of rubbing their hard cocks together until they were both messy with come, and then he wouldn’t stop, he would eat Dean out until they could go again, and fuck him as hard as the bed could stand.

He dreamed of getting rawed up by his big brother, so much so that he could almost feel the phantom tingle of Dean in the morning.

The heat in his groin, on the other hand, was real when Sam woke up all flustered. Dean had just gotten up too, he was throwing Sam a wink as he unabashedly went to the bathroom, as unselfconscious as could be about the boner he was sporting. No, Sam wasn’t a prude, he had seen that a hundred times over, but god, the dream was still fresh on his mind and he turned onto his stomach before Dean got a chance to read his face. He pretended to go back to sleep and ignored his own morning wood.

  


* * *

  


Back in the bunker they decided to take a few days off — unless the apocalypse rained upon them tomorrow of course. Dean needed to do some work on the Impala, as some parts he wanted to replace finally got delivered, and they had to stock up their money. Oh, and they needed to do laundry. Well... it was Sam’s turn to do the laundry. They had a bag with clothes from the hunt before Daisy, and all of them were coated with a hefty amount of crusty blood. He would probably need to throw them all away. But not before he tried to clean them. His favorite jacket was in there too.

It was a few easy days. Nothing came up and Sam was happy to say he had no nightmares. Dean had been in his dreams, like he was often, but there had been no more sex dreams, he wasn’t a horny teenager anymore after all.

The Daisy case stuck with him for a while — the dream part of it. He had been able to manipulate the dream while lucid and effectively remove the mare part of the night. Which, for someone who had more than an average amount of nightmares, sounded like quite a useful skill.

He had done the basic reading into lucid dreaming. The fact that it had worked out in his very first night trying it was more lucky circumstances than anything else. His subconscious had probably been at play there, and it had damn well known how important that had been, and that whole soul-touch-dream-thing had raised the chances even more. He bookmarked the page with the spell in case they ever needed to do it again.

People on the forums and sites about lucid dreaming he had scoured said the most important keys were writing down your dreams and asking yourself whether you were dreaming during the day, and eventually you would do it in your dreams as well. Sounded simple enough.

He held his nose closed and tried to breathe through it — he couldn’t, he was awake right now.

“Uh, Sam, there are easier methods to suffocate yourself.” Dean put down a plate with a bunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and sat across from him.

“Shut up,” said Sam and closed his laptop. “I’m trying out reality checks.”

Dean furrowed his brows and sat up straight. “Are you having hallucinations again?”

“No,” Sam said surprised, even though it wasn’t surprising at all Dean’s thoughts had jumped to that. “No, sorry, I didn’t — It’s not about that, but it’s kind of like that.”

Dean didn’t look consoled. “What?”

“I was asking myself whether I’m dreaming,” explained Sam.

“You’re not.”

“Yes, I know that now. Because I couldn’t breathe. But if I did that in a dream I _would_ be able to breathe through my nose because my physical body wouldn’t be holding my nose closed in bed.”

“Huh,” said Dean and grabbed a sandwich. “That’s stupid. You know when you’re awake.”

Sam sighed. “It’s not about knowing when you’re awake but about knowing when you’re asleep. When you’re dreaming you think everything is real too, even though nothing makes sense, right? You said that yourself. You were afraid in the dream, but you wouldn’t have been if that had happened to you when you were awake.”

Dean shrugged and gave him an annoyed look. “So what? Eat your sandwich.”

Sam picked one up and continued talking with his free hand, “ _So_ , if I had a nightmare about, for example, Lucifer, I would do a reality check and then, knowing it was a _dream_ , I could do anything I want and turn him into a rainbow of butterflies.”

He took a violent bite. There was a moment of silence and Sam thought the discussion was over and Dean had realized it wasn’t so stupid after all.

But then he said, “it’s a kaleidoscope of butterflies.”

Sam laughed and nearly choked on the bread. “Yeah,” he said. “There are actually four words for a group of butterflies.”

“Huh,” said Dean again. They kept it at that.

  


* * *

  


It worked that very night.

Sam wasn’t sure what made him realize. One moment he was sitting in the car with Dean, talking about their next hunt while driving through a dark forest illuminated by a way too large moon, and the next he just knew — he was dreaming.

At once everything seemed so much clearer. As if a hazy fog in his mind had been lifted, he could now see far into the dark of the trees and catch the details of even the smallest leaf with its intricate structure. The car was still moving. It was unreal.

The air was serene and quiet, and when he focused on Dean he felt calm. Dean was looking over at him.

Sam could see every pore and freckle, and he could count the individual eye lashes if he wanted. Dean was a perfect copy of his real self. Sam wasn’t surprised his brain could conjure up his brother so accurately. But damn, it was still unbelievable. And he could do whatever. He could do anything he wanted — he did the nose reality check, just to be sure, even though it was obvious already — yes, anything at all.

“Stop the car, I want to kiss you,” said Sam then before he lost more time and any of his confidence.

It was pathetic, but nobody was here to judge him. This was all in his mind, nobody would ever know he was fantasizing about his big brother while he didn’t have a clue Sam was screwed up this way.

Dean wasn’t complying at first, and Sam thought Dream Dean wouldn’t react how Sam wanted but how Sam imagined the real Dean would. He concentrated harder.

Dean stopped the car and stared into nothing. “Why can’t you say that in real life?” he said eventually.

Sam sighed softly. This wasn’t going the way he had hoped it would. Was his subconscious mocking him or trying to guilt him into stopping? He’d need to practice his dream control if he wanted to let this aid him in stopping nightmares, by the looks of it.

But this wouldn’t prevent him now from having Dean. He leaned over, turned Dean’s head by his chin and kissed him.

It wasn’t real, he knew that, but it _felt_ real. It felt like kissing did when he was awake and Dean would never know. Dean’s plush lips were soft under his — like he’d imagined it, like he’s imagining it now — and the skin under his hand was warm like a living creature’s. He cradled his neck and tugged him closer. They kissed open-mouthed, and Dean was going at it like he’d die if he didn’t get his tongue down Sam’s throat right this second. Sam hurt, he wanted it so much to be real.

He didn’t push further though. He could probably conjure up a bed in the blink of an eye (well, theoretically), but he was content to make out like teenagers.

He ran his hands over Dean’s flushing face and opened his eyes, pulled away a bit to soften the kiss. He brushed his lips lightly against Dean’s until he too opened his eyes. Dean blinked at him and grabbed the back of his head, drawing him in hard.

Sam moaned into Dean’s mouth and let his eyes fall shut again. They kissed and kissed, and Sam wasn’t sure when his awareness had started to fade away, but in the back of his head he started to feel his physical body return to him. The bed sheets that were draped over his body and the pillow under his head.

He was aware of his body before the sensation of the dream fully faded away. He clung onto the last shards of Dean until he couldn’t ignore the way his right arm was tingling anymore. He pulled it out from under the pillow and rolled onto his back. 

Sam took a deep breath. It had worked.

He was hot under the blanket so he kicked it off. Writing that dream down seemed foolish — what if Dean found it? Sam remembered his dreams well enough without writing them down. Well, he knew that wasn’t the only reason writing your dreams down in the morning was recommended, but it had to make do. He couldn’t risk it.

Sam closed his eyes. His pulse was still jittering in excitement. He wouldn’t get to do that every night, but hopefully he’d train himself to be aware of the dreams when he had bad ones. That was the goal after all.

One night he would manage to go all the way before wakefulness would call him back, when they were already in the vicinity of a bed, or when he had done this enough to have more control of the dreams. He didn’t need to be able to conjure up a bed, they could have fucked on the hood or the backseat, forcing it to expand so they both could fit comfortably… Next time.

  


* * *

  


“You seem happy,” said Dean. They were deep cleaning the Impala together, every last nook and cranny, from the hood down to the weapons in the trunk that they had taken inside to be cleaned in the evening.

Sam smirked at him. “I had a lucid dream last night.”

Dean raised his eyebrows. “Really? What was it like?”

“Amazing,” said Sam, dunking his sponge into the bucket with soapy water. He didn’t go into detail, hoped Dean wouldn’t ask.

“So? What did you dream?”

Sam bit his lip and crouched down to clean the sides of the wheels. “I was in the car and then I realized I was dreaming. I looked at stuff and then I woke up.”

“Sounds boring,” said Dean, somewhere on the other side of the car.

“I wasn’t, actually. Everything was so real and _vivid_ , Dean. It felt different than a normal dream. I could see everything, like my sight got dialed up from a 100% to 200.”

“What did you see?”

“Um. Nature and stuff.”

Dean scoffed. “You could have fucked your hottest fantasy chick but instead you look at plants? Sammy, and I thought I raised you right.”

He was glad Dean couldn’t see his face.

  


* * *

  


Sam came up with a way to mask his dream diary entries when he was fantasizing about Dean like that. ‘ _In the Impala with Dean, I sat in the backseat instead of shotgun,_ ’ he wrote, from now on code for incest. 

He continued keeping a dream journal, but he didn’t become lucid the next two nights.

‘ _We were kids, Dean made mac n cheese with marshmallow fluff, then we killed a werewolf with the fork,_ ’ was what he wrote down today. He smiled at the memory. Of when Dean had made mac and cheese fluff when they were younger, that was.

Dean didn’t cook ‘exotic’ stuff like that for Sam anymore — for one, there was no need to come up with a hundred different ways to spice up mac and cheese, since they were always going out to eat. But now that they had a kitchen, Dean was cooking again. And without the limitations of their teenage years Dean was free to cook whatever he liked, however he liked.

That was only one of the reasons Sam was surprised when Dean put a jar of marshmallow fluff next to Sam’s mac and cheese bowl that evening. The other was, of course, the coincidence that he had dreamed of it.

“What’s with the face?” asked Dean as he sat down. “You used to love this, don’t give me that healthy bullshit crap.”

Sam didn’t know what face Dean was talking about, but he schooled it back to neutral. “I— No, I.” He grabbed the jar and opened it, not sure if he actually wanted to sweeten this dish up. “I haven’t had this in a while. I mean, _years_. What made you think of it? I didn’t even know you remembered.” Something was nogging on his mind, but he didn’t what to entertain that thought.

Dean shrugged easily and gave him that smirk of his. “‘Course I remember. I saw the fluff in the store this morning and I thought why not? You don’t have to mix it in if you don’t want to.”

Sam bit his lip and scooped in a healthy spoonful in his bowl and stirred, just to see Dean smile at him. It _could_ be a coincidence.

They couldn’t possibly still be sharing dreams.

Dean filled him in on a possible hunt in Minnesota and Sam nodded along, agreeing to drive there tomorrow without really listening to what Dean was saying. His mind was back in the book. He needed to check it out again.

He got to it right after dinner, his head whirring with theories. The chapter about the execution of the spell clearly stated the subjects had to physically touch to allow their souls to meet in a sleep state — but what if the souls were already in contact?

 _Soulmates_.

But that would mean… Dean had all those dreams too, sharing them with Sam.

Every night after they had done the spell, even the one Sam had been lucid in. Granted, that didn’t mean Dean secretly wished they would roll around in the sheets together, since he probably had just been, well, _dreaming_. And dreams can get fucked up without Sam having that kind of control over them. He swallowed hard and bit his tongue. He couldn’t tell Dean.

But — the first night after the hunt in the motel room, they had _both_ woken up with a boner.

 _Dreams, I guess, huh?_ echoed Dean’s voice through his mind.

“Don’t stay up too long, nerd. We’re off early tomorrow.”

Sam looked up at Dean, who was standing in the doorway to the library, dressed ready for bed. Heat shot through his chest in embarrassment.

He gave a nod and closed the book. “No, yeah. I think I’ll go to bed now too.”

Dean nodded and went his merry way, leaving Sam to stare at him bathed in guilt.

It shouldn’t matter whether it had been his mind alone that had come up with those dreams or whether Dean’s had been at play too. It shouldn’t matter whether Dean had enjoyed them or not. But it did. And Sam hated himself for not owning up immediately, not telling Dean they were still sharing, and not looking for a counterspell right away. But admitting to knowing would be admitting to steering the dream they had kissed in. Dean knew he had been lucid.

Sam brushed his teeth and changed clothes. He didn’t admit to himself that he was purposefully slow in his movements, hoping Dean would be asleep by the time he was done. Then he found himself standing in front of Dean’s closed door, light shone through the crack at the bottom, and—

He gnawed on his lip. Sam inhaled deeply, put a hand on the doorknob and then turned around and left.

God, he could face against the scariest of monsters but he chickened out trying to tell his brother he wanted to get down and dirty with him.

He needed to make sure. One more night. He’d try to get an answer from Dean in their dreams, and if didn’t work tonight he’d tell him in the morning. Cross his heart and hope to die.

  


* * *

  


The alarm went off at 4 AM. Approximately four and a half hours after he had fallen asleep. He was wide awake immediately — the hunter life didn’t allow for much groggy time after waking up, and besides, four hours was enough for Sam, had to be. Currently they were getting used to more hours of sleep, but his body could still function well enough with as little as that.

Falling asleep again would be the hardest part.

He was doing what was called WILD — a wake induced lucid dream. He would let his body fall asleep while his mind stayed awake. Gliding already lucid into the dream state.

If he’s able to pull it off.

He relaxed his body and focused on his breathing. On the darkness before him.

It took a while for his body to start feeling heavy, and even longer until his head felt like it was vibrating. There was a rumble, but he didn’t start to see things, and he was still painfully aware of the room all around him.

Eventually everything stopped. He was still self aware but no pictures had appeared before him, no dream landscape.

He opened his eyes. A quick glance at the clock on his bedside table told him three whole hours had passed. He wasn’t sure whether he had fallen asleep in the middle of it or whether he had been in a dreamless state this whole time.

Sam stayed in bed for a few more moments before admitting defeat — Dean would be awake by now. He pushed himself up, went to the kitchen and there he was, making breakfast at the stove.

“Want some scrambled eggs, Sam?” he asked without turning around.

“Sure,” said Sam, he could use some breakfast before talking to Dean. He sat down at the table.

Dean came over to put a plate before him and cracked the egg open, right onto the plate. It was an ostrich egg probably, as it was way too big to be a chicken egg. Dean gave him a spoon for the raw puddle of egg. This was his favorite food, but Sam stared at it in contemplation. He debated whether he should put some coffee on that.

“Wait a minute,” he said out loud. This was a dream. He did a nose check just because it was a funny feeling. Being able to breathe through his closed nose was kind of trippy, he should try breathing under water one of these days. But first — “Dean.”

Dean was rummaging in the fridge and turned around after Sam had spoken. “Need more salt?”

“No.” He stood up and stepped over to Dean, unsure of what to do next. “Dean,” he said. “You’re in a dream.”

Dean cocked his head at him and frowned lightly. “No, I’m not.”

“Remember what I told you? The reality check?”

Dean hesitated for a second, something flashed in his eyes, and then he brought his hand up to check. “Damn,” he said. “That’s weird.” He kept breathing through his closed off nose.

“Yeah.“ Sam hesitated. “You can do anything you want,” he said carefully.

Dean laughed and looked around, joy on his face. Sam stepped a half step closer and caught Dean’s eyes, not wanting to initiate anything himself. Out of fear or guilt or —

Then, Dean locked their lips together, and all thought left Sam, replaced by a sudden arousal, hot and bright.

Dean sighed against his lips, or maybe moaned, the sound was swallowed up by Sam. Sam shivered in response and boldly pushed his hands under Dean’s shirt, tracing his fingers up along his ribs until the shirt was botched up. Dean stepped back to pull it over his head.

Sam took a moment to marvel at Dean’s skin. Everything was hyper realistic to him and he wondered if Dean was feeling the same way or if he experienced being lucid different from him.

Dean was up in his space again, and Sam really didn’t mind, because the instant Dean’s hands were on him their clothes disappeared and Dean was pushing him against a wall.

“Fuck,” huffed Sam as his back connected with the wall. It hadn’t hurt, he was amazed at the roughness of the wall against his back. But he wanted to feel Dean, so he pulled him im, pressed against him, skin to skin. Everything was tingling and their cocks brushed together. Sam’s jumped and dribbled some precum.

He wondered if he was hard right now, lying in his bed.

Dean kissed up his neck, leaving a trail of wet kisses. His eyelashes fluttered against Sam’s skin. Dean bit at Sam’s jaw and growled — the sound mirrored by Sam — and thrust his hips forward. Sam met the impact and more pleasure build up as he rutted against him just as enthusiastically.

They grinded against each other while breathing hotly together, too uncoordinated for proper kisses. Dean was so warm against him. Sam was aware of him like they were one. A gasp escaped him and his throat grew tight. If Dean felt the same bliss as him this would be perfect.

“ _Sammy_.” Dean buried his face in Sam’s neck and pressed impossibly closer to Sam’s front. Dean inhaled sharply and bit his shoulder. Their cocks pulsed together as they came, the pleasure spreading through their whole bodies, not caring whose was whose, and in that moment it really didn’t matter.

Sam moaned deeply and closed his eyes, letting the tingling aftermath roll over him, his body heavy and sated.

When he opened them again he was in his bed. Not completely hard anymore but there was a mess in boxers, which answered the question whether he had actually ejaculated.

“Like I’m going through freaking puberty again…” he muttered as he shimmied out of them, throwing the blanket to the side in the process.

There was the slight sound of a door opening a hallway away. Dean. Probably going to the bathroom to clean up their night’s activity. A lazy smile spread on Sam face, he had his proof.

He listened patiently for Dean, who minutes later came back down the hall. Sam’s heart gave a jolt, thinking for a hot second Dean would join him in his room. But Dean had no reason to think Sam had been a real part of it. His stomach turned with happy longing as Dean passed.

  


* * *

  


The most difficult part was still before him — he had to actually say it. But the fear and apprehension was gone, left was only a giddiness he hadn’t felt since his first teenage crush told him she liked him back — Only that Dean hadn’t told him he liked him back yet, of course.

Dean hummed a tune Sam didn’t recognize. He was at peace, one hand lazily on the steering wheel. Sam bit his tongue. It was a dark morning outside, the rain a constant stream on the windows and the roof of the Impala. Everything was grey and bleaky, and, miles away, thunder went off. 

There was no perfect time to do this, so he took a deep breath and licked his lips.

“Stop the car, I want to kiss you,” Sam said.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't typically read case fics, but apparently I had it in me to write one. I hope you enjoyed it. Leave your thoughts and come check out my [tumblr](http://twobrothersfuckingeachother.tumblr.com) if you want
> 
> Also, don't take any pointers from me about lucid dreaming, Sam had a much easier time with it than normal for the sake of fiction.


End file.
